Method for synchronizing program sections of a computer program

Abstract

The invention relates to a method for synchronizing program sections of a computer program. The program sections can run in parallel on different processors of a computer. Data transfer between the program sections is synchronized by providing a buffer. Unauthorized access to the buffer is prevented by means of a flag that is set automatically by buffer utilities. The data transfer between individual program sections is thus synchronized by the buffer synchronization class only, which consists of the buffer, internal variables and the buffer utilities, is configured in a very simple manner and can thus be tested in operation an in a relatively simple manner by means of a computer comprising several processors. The data transfer is very efficient as the individual utilities are designed in a simple and short manner and thus require little processing time and as the data can be directly written in or read out of the buffer.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]1. Field of the Invention[0002]The invention is directed to a method for synchronizing program sections of a computer program whose program sections can run in parallel on different processors of a computer.[0003]2. Description of the Related Art[0004]The programming and synchronization of threads is explained in “Win 32 Multithreaded Programming”, Aaron Cohen and Mike Woodring, O'Reilly & Associates Inc., ISBN 1-56592-296-4, particularly on pages 258 through 269 and 301 through 303. Such threads are also referred to as “program sections” below.[0005]Program sections that generate data for another program section are referred to as “producers” or “writers”, and program sections that process such data are referred to as “users” or “readers”. It is necessary that the individual program sections work asynchronously in order to optimally utilize the computing power of a computer having a plurality of processors in the division of the work between the ind...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015]The invention is based on the object of providing a method for synchronizing program sections of a computer program that can be em

Problems solved by technology

Such an asynchronous data transfer is highly efficient but very hard to program.

One problem of these computer programs distributed onto a plurality of program sections is that a test in which the program sections run simultaneously on a plurality of processors is difficult to implement

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